


Fostering Hope

by daroos



Category: Captain America (Movies), MCU, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adoption, Barton Farm, Dead Parents, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Kidfic, Laura Barton has to deal with these schmucks, Natasha and Fury have a Weird relationship, Phil did not train for this shit, daddy!Phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 08:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5085496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daroos/pseuds/daroos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil had always joked that if he got left all the kids that people had put him down for as their “in case of the worst” godfather choice, he could run an orphanage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fostering Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Though this fic does not include any graphic discussion of parental death, it is predicated on a lot of people dying during the Hydra takeover of SHIELD.
> 
> Thankyou to KatHawkins for a beta runthough.

Phil had always joked that if he got left all the kids that people had put him down for as their “in case of the worst” godfather choice, he could run an orphanage. It was macabre humor - the idea that individual SHIELD agents could and would make the ultimate sacrifice was never far from people’s minds, but the widespread culling that would be required for Phil to be activated as a legal guardian for more than a child or two was, even to SHIELD’s pragmatic view, utterly unthinkable.

The first call Phil got was from a kindergarten in Bethesda.

“Can I speak with Philip Coulson please?” The woman on the other end of the line sounded young and worried.

Phil pulled his phone from his ear, frowned at the number, and replaced it. “What is this regarding?”

“Is this Mr. Coulson? It’s regarding one of our students. I’m afraid I can’t release anything else until you can confirm you’re Mr. Coulson.”

Phil’s frown deepened. “I am.”

He heard a muttered ‘oh thank God’ on the other end of the line. “I haven’t been able to reach any of her other listed guardians, and nobody’s come to get her,” the woman said.

“Who, exactly?” He asked, leaned across his desk to snag a pen, and was abruptly on alert.

“Hope.” At Phil’s silence. “Hope Ekwensi.”

“Of course, Hope. Diana’s daughter. Could you give me your address?”

The kindergarten was about two hours’ drive from his post-resurrection hideout in his utterly illegal, somewhat-unsafe-over-those-distances-at-that-speed, flying car. He got a promise from the doubtful-sounding teacher that Hope would be there when he arrived, stopped by his gun safe to retrieve his sidearm, and was in the air within ten minutes of hanging up.  
\--  
He tried calling Nick, tried Maria, tried _Sitwell_ and got nothing. He got nobody, and concern turned to fear turned to determination. He tuned the radio to emergency frequencies, and that determination rewound all the way back to panic. His hands went cold and his thoughts swam around in his head like a feeding frenzy in a koi pond at the disorganized timbre of the emergency broadcasts in the region. Luckily, Lola’s flight path was already engaged and set. SHIELD had an APB out for Captain Fucking America, and everything was going topsy turvy in the most violent, most illogical way. Another two calls came in while he was enroute, both for children in the DC area, luckily, and news of a massive explosion in New Jersey made it clear that the day’s action was only beginning.  
\--  
Hope, when he got to her, was small, though not small for her age, tear-stained, and very suspicious-looking indeed. She had perfectly symmetrical afro-puffs and a frown Phil recognized from her mother.

He knelt down so they were on a level. “I’m Phil. I’m a friend of your mom’s. She asked me to pick you up if she couldn’t make it to get you.”

“What’s our code word?” Hope asked.

Phil blinked and held up a finger in a silent ‘just a moment’ gesture. He had retrieved the files on Hope during the journey south, and remembered the pass code was somewhere in there. He found it, leaned in, and whispered it in Hope’s ear.

Her frown didn’t disappear, but it did lose some of its edge. “Okay,” she told him, and held out her hand for him to grasp.

Phil swung by a second preschool and a grade school for the other two children, made them all go on a bathroom break to give himself time to get travel supplies, and crowded them all into the backseat of Lola.

“Where are we going Mr. Phil?” Aidan asked.

“Are we going home?” Olivia asked.

“We... are going to a sleepover until we can get a hold of your parents,” Phil extemporized.

“I don’t have my sleeping bag,” Aidan worried.

“Or Ms. Snake,” Olivia added.

“How will momma find me if I go to a sleepover?” Hope asked.

Phil allowed himself as long as it took for three long breaths to panic, internally, and very quietly. “It should work just like Santa,” Phil told them.

“I’m Jewish,” Olivia said.

“Then please don’t spoil Santa for everyone else,” Phil replied.  
\--  
“Laura?”

“ **Phil?!** ”

“I hate to drop in like this, but are you home?”

“Right now? No, I’m getting groceries. Are we not going to talk about how you’re dead?”

“It’s be real great if that could wait just a bit. Do you know what kindergarteners eat?”

Laura’s voice turned wary. “Why are you asking that?”

“I could really use your help. Clint’s too if he’s around.”  
\--  
“You need more help than the two of us, Phil,” Laura said when they met at her front door. Hope and Aidan each had one of Phil’s hands while Olivia stood slightly behind the three of them, shy but independent.

“That’s probably true. I have to turn around and go back to Washington. I got another call while I was on my way here.”

“Come take a look at the news first,” Laura said. She ushered the children to the large dining table and set down snacks in front of each of them.

The SHIELD frequencies had gone ominously quiet on the flight over. Phil watched the shaky cell footage of a helicarrier rising from the Potomac before crashing right back down as it played on repeat. Laura put a laptop down next to Phil, and as cold and scared and helpless as Phil had felt moments before, everything felt about a hundred thousand times worse upon digesting what the internet was telling him.

“Everyone’s blown?” he asked. Laura nodded. Phil’s jaw bunched. “Christ,” he muttered. “I need to-” _what?_ his mind supplied. He wasn’t a SHIELD agent. He had neither command nor authority. Aside from some rudimentary access to SHIELD communications, he didn’t have clearance for much of anything. He didn’t have ordinance or intelligence or anything that might be of use, and _fucking what now_ he kept getting calls for more and more children who, odds were, had seen their parents for the last time some time this morning. He answered his phone with a barely controlled, “Yes?”

Clint ricocheted through the front door with an expression of barely-suppressed panic which morphed, but didn’t lessen when he saw Phil. “Sir?” he asked, a wild look in his eye.

“Mr. Coulson?” The voice on the phone sounded much too young.

Phil nodded the affirmative at Clint while trying to focus on the phone. “Yes,” he replied. Clint squeezed the breath out of him with an enveloping hug, his face pressed into Phil’s shoulder. Phil lifted his elbow to keep the phone at his ear and awkwardly patted Clint’s back.

“Dad gave me this number for in case of emergency.” Clint pulled back, saw Phil’s expression, and crowded into his personal space so his good ear was close enough to eavesdrop on the call. “Nobody is picking up and I think this qualifies.”

“I think this does, too,” Phil agreed. “I’m on my way - are you somewhere safe?”  
\--  
Phil was back in the air to make contact with yet more children, this set at least a little older, while Clint was tasked with procuring ground transport and meeting him in Virginia to pick up the increasingly large crowd of minors. Laura called in some neighbor’s teens to help babysit while she helped screen and coordinate the calls coming with increasing frequency and urgency to Phil’s lines. In spare moments, everyone combed through Phil’s legal documents to identify all the children he might have at some point become legally responsible for, in a somewhat hopeless attempt to get ahead of the wave of underaged trouble.

Washington was under martial law by the time that Phil got into the area, though Hydra had melted back into the background like the sneaky bastards they all were. He was certain that reports of mysterious deaths would continue throughout the coming weeks and months.

Dusk fell and provided some cover to his transit, which was the only reason he managed to get in for extractions at all. Laura had managed to clump the kids together into groups of four or five, getting older children to travel to the locations of the youngest children, hoping that numbers and age would provide some safety until they were retrieved. Phil tried to be sure each group had emergency supplies before loading them into Lola and making the flight out to a VFW in northern Virginia. 

They had all had a minor freak out when they realized that they had neither SHIELD safe houses nor a more public gathering place to stash the kids until Clint could pick them up, before they’d struck upon the idea of co-opting a veteran’s hall. Though Phil suspected that more than a few children would come away from the experience having had their first taste of whiskey long before legal drinking age, it was a small price to pay for off-the-grid safety for a few hours.

All in all there were twenty-eight additional children that he picked up that night, ranging in age from six to seventeen. When Clint rolled to a stop in a school bus, Phil was about ready to drop from exhaustion and the kids looked possibly worse.

They opened the luggage compartments and loaded everything the kids had come with inside the bus. It was a baffling array of stuffed animals, go-bags, backpacks, and sleeping bags, and Phil and Clint had to search through it all to find anything that could be bugged or tracked. They left all suspect items with the bartender at the VFW, in spite of protests from the kids. A few of the oldest children had small arms on their person, and they had all gotten some form of The Talk about how to deal with situations just like this one, though, so ‘it’s for your safety’ wasn’t such a strange concept. 

“Are you sure you’re good to drive?” Clint asked when he had arrived.

“I am if you are,” Phil replied. The VFW bartender had supplied him with something he claimed was coffee but tasted more like tar.

Clint moved in close so that the children wouldn’t overhear. “I’m serious, Phil. You die -- for real -- and a bunch of these kids might not have anybody else in the world.”

“One, I did die for real. Two, I know. I’ll be fine. It’s just been a lot of driving -- flying -- already today. My butt cheeks might never plump up again after all the sitting.”

“Come on, sir, the flight to Dubai was a lot longer than all of this.” 

Phil shrugged. “I wasn’t the one flapping the whole way to Dubai, though.”  
\--  
The flight in Lola was around two and a half hours, but by aging school bus the transit time was more than six. Phil set down at the farm around 2AM and parked near an elderly tractor in the Barton’s barn. Laura greeted him at the door and sat him down in front of a bowl of soup and a beer.

They had an exchange of looks over the neck of the bottle, but Laura shrugged. “It’s medicinal. You need a nap at least, and don’t even try to pretend to me you haven’t been swilling army coffee all evening.”

Phil deflated a bit and tipped the mouth of the bottle to her in agreement. “Did you get any rest?”

Laura shrugged. “I got a few hours. I’d have to be up soon for milking anyway.”

“How are the kids?”

“Horny raging terrors.” At Phil’s aghast look she burst out in giggles. “Oh my god I thought you were talking about the goats. Three of them climbed the ‘no climb’ fencing and made themselves sick off the new corn shoots.” She took a breath. “The _children_ are okay - scared and confused, but...” she took another breath. “Aidan took probably five tries to get him to sleep, but the girls went down pretty easily. Lila was excited to have new live in friends. Cooper has been hiding in his room.”

“This must be hard on them -- I’m sorry.” Phil ate in silence for a few minutes.

Laura leaned in and put her hand on his forearm. “Phil, what _happened_?”

“Hydra hit and I was never removed from—”

“No, Phil, what happened with _you_? Clint went to your _funeral_.”

“Are we doing this now?” Phil asked, tired.

Laura threw up her hands. “We don’t have to, Phil, jeeze, but you have to give me _something_.”

Phil set his spoon down forcefully and sighed. “I died on the helicarrier. The medics dropped me in a cryo tube and a few months later a doctor in Korea put me back together and got my heart pumping again. I woke up from the coma about two months ago.”

Laura’s face crumpled. “Two months?”

“I was under a gag order.” Laura’s expression clearly said, ‘are you serious’. “What do you want from me?”

“You could have come to visit, Phil. Clint hasn’t been on a mission since New York. The children are glad of it, but they know it’s because something is wrong. He tore the game room apart down to the studs, Phil. I want my house back.”

“You have to be the only spouse I know who is glad when her husband is sent out.”

“You know that’s not it. But saving the world is what he does. Missions is what he does, and between Loki and you...”

“Low blow.”

Laura rolled her eyes and gave him a sad smile. “He blamed himself, Phil.”

“He wasn’t—”

She shook her head and silenced him. “You know that’s not how the Barton Brain works. He blamed himself and he’s been taking it out on the game room and at the rate he’s been going I’m not certain the house will still be standing by the end of the year.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Phil promised. 

Laura stood and rubbed his shoulder as she passed behind him. “You remember where your room is? It won’t be yours for long, but I put the children all together so at least someone can get some sleep.”

Phil reached up and pressed her hand into his shoulder and glanced back at her. “Thanks. I’m sorry to—”

She squeezed and he shut up. “Sometimes you gotta step up, you know? Get some rest.”  
\--  
Phil woke to the sounds of many, many unhappy children, and a distinct subset who had somehow maintained their equilibrium but were no less loud for that. The clock said it was a little past seven in the morning. Glancing out the window, he could see the bus parked under a tree by the barn and scattered across the Barton lawn an exodus of minors.

Phil dressed in yesterday’s clothes and took a moment to look at the Barton’s guest bed. It was probably the last privacy he would get for the foreseeable future, if the flock of them was anything to go by. He toed on his loafers - utterly inappropriate for the country - and descended.

The Barton children manned a griddle and were engrossed in flipping pancakes into an increasingly full baking dish in the oven. Olivia helped the Bartons, while Aidan was propped in the corner of the long kitchen table looking sullen and ill rested. Hope popped out of nowhere next to Phil. “Mr. Phil?” she asked, and held out her hand for him to take. She was inexplicably sticky.

Laura helped kids get washed up and directed them to be seated. “Could you do serving?” she asked. She was already soaked through on her front from splashing, but she looked much more awake than Phil felt. “There’s coffee in the laundry room.”

“Sure.”

Each child got a plate with a pancake - two for those that looked over 12 - and a dollop of syrup. Sausages went around after that, and cups of milk and juice. Before long the entirety of the Barton first floor was covered in young people eating or finished eating or waiting to eat.

“This milk tastes funny,” one of the boys, perhaps 11, said.

“It’s from our goats!” Lila told him with pride. “It’s full of extra good stuff.”

“It tastes like butt,” the boy replied, and Clint had to move quickly to avoid spilled drinks and a minor slap-fight.

“How many of you napped while you were on the bus?” Laura asked. About half of the hands went up. “How many of you have sleeping bags?” Again about half of the hands went up, with some at a hesitant half-mast. One of the youngest children was already asleep, face mushed against the kitchen table in a dribble of syrup. “Okay, everyone with a sleeping bag, go get it and line up outside, tallest to shortest. Everyone without one, stay right here.”

Laura and Clint worked together like Phil and Sitwell worked together on operations; seamlessly and without obvious methods of communication. Somehow they apportioned children to free space, got everyone under _something_ and convinced even the smallest of children to give five minutes’ quiet time a try. Even Aidan and Olivia went down for a nap. 

“Jeeze, did you drug the pancakes or something?” Phil asked in a tone quiet enough to not awaken anybody. 

Laura gave him a tired smile. “Not quite.”

Phil felt a tug on his cuff and looked down into Hope’s big eyes. “Mr. Phil?” she asked. He’d once read a study about how children were built to be adorable so people would take care of them.

“Why aren’t you asleep with everyone else?”

“I’m not tired.” She drew out the ‘i’ into a vowel of protest. She raised her arms up in a clear signal that Phil should pick her up. He did so with an oof of effort, and secured her against his hip. “Mr. Phil - when is mommy coming?”

Phil tried to smooth her hair down but failed utterly. He looked over her head at Clint, who at least gave him a sympathetic shrug. Phil looked at the sleeping children, and thought of the ones upstairs and in the playhouse and god knew wherever else the Bartons had stashed them and had the crushing realization that he was likely going to have this conversation with every single one of these children. “If she could be here, she would.” He soothed his hand up and down Hope’s back.  
\--  
One of the neighbor babysitters had experience as a counselor at summer camp, and helped Phil come up with all the basics that he’d need to know for each child - age, grade, gender, allergies or food restrictions, names of their parents, lists of siblings, and any phone numbers they had memorized on the basis that if they had it memorized it was likely important. From there they divided them up into 0-10, 11-14, solidly-teenaged, which Laura agreed was a good developmental spread. 

“The tweens are going to be a nightmare, though,” she confided to Phil.

They tacked up big sheets of butcher paper and listed children’s names and put photos next to them printed off the home photo printer. Though the array of new, tiny people who Phil was responsible for was utterly overwhelming, it helped him regain the feeling of SHIELD Orientation Week. There were lots of names to learn, people to meet, and a pressing need to identify what motivated each one of his charges, and what each of their unique needs might be. He could do this. They could do this.

“I daresay nobody will be more trouble than Clint was.”

Laura raised an eyebrow. “Word of advice: never say ‘dare’ in this household.”  
\--  
For all that Phil had girded himself for thirty tiny hellions along the lines of Natasha when they had first captured her, the kids were, for the most part, just kids. Too smart by half, traumatised, and with more small arms and emergency preparedness training than most, sure, but just kids.

Phil identified a few lieutenants amongst the oldest children, and picked out a few troublemakers amongst the tweens. Laura and Clint exchanged silent looks while dishes were loaded into the dishwasher -- still with the freaky silent communication thing. Clint turned Phil towards the back door with a firm hand on his undamaged shoulder and directed him towards the barn.

The Barton barn was no country showpiece -- it contained broken farm equipment and huge stacks of fertilizer, straw, and raw materials, and a weapons locker that matched the one behind the wall of the rumpus room. For obvious reason, no children had been stashed there.

“Yes?” Phil asked.

“Seems like maybe now is a good time to step back and take a breath -- see what your plans might be moving forward.”

Phil snorted a humorless chuckle. “You’re starting to sound like me, Barton.”

A dark expression passed over Clint’s face like a thundercloud on an otherwise clear day. “Yeah, well. Someone had to step up with you gone.” His tone was flat, his voice quiet, and the words hit like a punch from a prizefighter.

Phil looked down and bit his lip. Now was not the time to deal with that. “Not the time,” Phil said in a warning tone.

Clint waved it off and scuffed his boot against the floorboard of the barn in a dismissive agreement.

“I guess I was thinking we lie low here until things calm down a bit: regroup and head back to DC when it seems safe.”

Clint still didn’t meet his eyes. “Okay,” he said.

Phil knew that tone. “What.”

Clint shrugged. “The country could be good for these kids.”

Phil raised an eyebrow. “Most of these children were raised in cities -- they took the metro to school and grew up taking recess on the school’s roof. It’s not exactly fair to drop them in the middle of nowhere -- no offense.”

Clint canted his hips against the tractor and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. It was getting beyond-regulation long. “I guess that would be pretty weird for some of them.”

“Not to mention, it’s hardly fair to your family to—”

Clint waved off Phil’s objections like they were flies. “If these kids need a place, they have a place. However long, however many, no question. Hell, I’ll build a residence hall if needs be, to keep everyone in. If SHIELD really is—” Clint’s teeth clicked shut and he looked away.

“SHIELD takes care of its own even if it doesn’t exist any longer,” Phil replied. Clint nodded, his mouth a stubborn line. Phil took a deep breath. “I’ll need to—” he cut himself off and nearly growled in frustration. “I keep thinking that I need to contact this person or the other, and—”

“—you just can’t. I know the feeling.” Clint’s eyes slid up to meet his. “Did that a lot after you were gone.” Phil started to protest but Clint held up a hand and silenced him. “Kept thinking, when I was having a hard time, that I’d give you a call - that you always did make me take a breath or two.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel guilty?” Phil asked.

“No, not exactly.” Clint considered. “Maybe.”

“I was frozen in a cryo pod for most of when you’re talking about.”

“I’m just sayin’. I don’t know what I’m sayin’,” Clint admitted in an undertone. “Fuck, so we can’t call SHIELD who else is there?”

“Thor?” Phil suggested, flippant.

“Stark?” Clint countered, sounding doubtful.

Their eyes met. “Potts.”  
\--  
Clint left the farm early in the morning with the minivan and the coolers to go about four towns over to the _other_ other CostCo so it would look less like they were running an under the table orphanarium and also to make a call from far enough away from the farm that conceivably it would be more difficult to track back to his family. His ultra-top-secret family. Since that was his life. He parked in the hot-like-the-surface-of-the-sun side of the massive parking lot where even fitness freaks looking for a walk to their oversized groceries did not dare park, and hitched his hip against the bumper to make the call.

“Ms. Potts?” Clint asked politely when he had made his way through a gamut of secretaries and under-staff that made talking to the president seem simple.

“Speaking. Who is this?” She sounded brusque, and as though she might be in transit from somewhere important to somewhere more important.

“Is this a secure line?”

“It is on my end, from anything but _Mr. Stark_.” She stressed his name as though she suspected Tony was listening in at that very moment. “What is this about?”

“Clint Barton. You may not-”

“Hawkeye,” she replied before he could get out the ‘I played with Tony during the Chitauri thing’, speech that he had stored up.

“Yeah.”

“What do you need?”

“Funny you should ask: legal help, actually.”

He could practically feel her eyes rolling. “Where are you-”

“Not for-” he tried to correct quickly.

“I’ll send a-”

“-just that I have about-”

“-pick you up and bring-”

“-thirty kids who need-”

“ _Kids??_ ” Potts shrilled, breaking through both their streams of speech.

“Yeah. Look, it’s complicated. Do you have a minute?”

He heard her on the line shooing someone away, shuffling some papers, and likely sitting down. “Go.”

The command felt so much like Phil on the other end of his line, his response was reflexive. He told her everything. It seemed that life with Stark had inoculated her against shocks, and she took the news of Phil’s living status, and his accidental maybe-kinda-legal adoption of a montessori school’s worth of children in stride. “I can see why you would want some legal counsel. I don’t have any custody lawyers on staff-” he thought he heard ‘thank god’ muttered under her breath, but his hearing wasn’t so great so it might have been a number of phrases. “-but I do have a few that could do estate law, and help with the life insurance. I’ll send out feelers and get back to you with some names.”

They exchanged secure line numbers and a few more trivial details.

“Mr. Barton?”

“Hmm?” Clint rubbed his eye vigorously and squinted out at the parking lot.

“Is Phil really planning on keeping all of these children? I mean- I guess I’m asking if he’s considered what’s in their best interests.”

Clint’s initial reaction was of _course_ Phil had considered what was in their best interest - how was she even asking? But upon taking a deep breath it occurred to Clint that perhaps they had been operating on emergency mode for a little too long, and that the switch over to disaster assessment and containment was necessary.

“I don’t know,” Clint answered truthfully. 

Potts let the silence hang between them for a moment before changing the subject once more. “Are you all safe? Do you need anything on... that front?”

“We’re okay for now. Legal counsel is all we’re lacking at the moment, I think. That and beds for everyone.”

As soon as the words slipped out of his mouth Clint knew it was going to result in Something.

“I’ll send some stuff with the lawyers. Take care, and call me if you need help. And tell Phil he’s not off the hook over this.”  
\--  
“You are amazing,” Phil told Laura.

She flicked her head to get some hair out of her eyes and winked at Phil. “I grew up in a huge family; I know the drill.”

“You are the only thing standing between me and a nervous collapse. I hope you know how much I appreciate that.”

While Phil and Clint had been sorting out legal issues, Laura had kept the kitchen stocked and maxed out the number of books she could take from the library, and instituted both a quiet reading hour, and a nap hour which gave them some semblance of sanity. Laura had hired on the neighborhood babysitters during their spring break with what was probably exorbitant-for-the-countryside fees which gave them all just enough time to stay slightly above water. While Phil had been meeting with lawyers about the possibility of collecting life insurance on behalf of his new wards, Laura had instituted _and enforced_ a chore wheel. That the chore wheel’s chores included things like playing with the goats and firewood-stacking races helped immensely. While Clint was scouring the web for signs that their homestead had been discovered, Laura was feeding them all with industrial sized pans of home cooking and a knack for allergy avoidance. Laura made raising thirty-plus new orphans in the countryside with only three actual adults seem like a somewhat reasonable possibility. It wasn’t -- Phil knew that -- but she was so stupendously capable at this home-and-children thing that she made it seem reasonable.  
\--  
Six days into the kidpocalypse a honda accord from the 80’s pulled into the Barton’s long drive. Cooper informed Clint and Phil a minute before the car arrived, galloping up on Captain Crunch, the Bartons’ elderly gelding. That did give them enough time for Clint to disappear into the attic and probably onto the roof with a bow, and for Phil to fetch his sidearm from a lockbox. 

The vehicle rolled to a stop under the same tree as the school bus, and Natasha stepped out. Her hands were in sight and her expression was, for her, filled with confusion.

“Did you kidnap a goddamned Waldorf school?” Nick Fury asked, sounding aggrieved and a bit disbelieving from the passenger's seat. 

“Phil?” Natasha asked, voice even but quiet.

“Yep.” He thumbed the safety on his handgun and tucked it in the back of his pants. A rope unspooled from above them and Clint auto belayed to a spot next to Phil. Natasha glanced at Clint for confirmation. He nodded.

“Huh,” she said.

Hope and another young girl began to swing on the rope Clint had just used for quick egress. Clint tied a quick loop in the end which one of them could use as a swing seat while the other pushed.

“Huh,” Natasha repeated.

“Is someone going to help me out of this junk-pile deathtrap?” Nick groused from his seat.  
\--  
Phil looked over the assembled upturned faces and felt a sudden fear that he wasn’t up to being all these kids needed him to be: that ultimately he would fail them and their parents’ trust. He swallowed.

“I want you all to know that we’re talking about placement because it seems like a genuinely good option for many of you. If you think about it, and you decide to stay with me, that’s 100% okay.”

A hand went up. “Even if all of us want to stay?” a young boy asked.

“Even if every one of you here wants to live with me, we will make it work,” Phil assured even as he had thoughts about buying a ranch in Utah at the prospect. “Any other questions?”

There was something adjacent to silence that was the best a group of under 14’s could manage under most circumstances.

“In some of your cases we’re not sure what happened to your parents and until we have proof, we’re not going to give up on finding them. But the fact of the matter is, even if things turn out for the best, you need to keep on living your lives until we can verify that. Some of you have family that would like very much for you to go live with them; again, if you decide that’s not what you want I’ll do my best for you.”

“Through the intranet I’ve gotten the offer for foster placements with other SHIELD families further afield. These are offers which I think many of you should consider. In many cases you should remain at your school, at least through the end of the year, and after that you would be with people who understand your situation.”

“Your last options are to stay with the Bartons, or myself. Living on a farm would be a big change for most of you, but it’s safe and off the Hydra grid. I can understand how some of you might need that right now. Staying with me...” Phil trailed off. “I’ve never been a parent or a caretaker. It would be a... learning curve, and I’m living well outside of DC.”

They all seemed like bad options to Phil -- bad options to cover worse outcomes -- but the kids all looked up at him like he held the answers to their internal angst. “Now I’m going to be meeting with each of you to talk about what you’d like to do, and what your long term goals are. Give it some serious thought, okay?” there were nods and murmurs. “Any questions?”  
\--  
Laura dried her hands and dropped the towel into the nearest laundry hamper. “Take a break, Phil.”

Phil’s eyes were aching, even behind his reading glasses. The pen callous that had faded away during his rehab was sore and toughening up again. I’m so close to being done,” Phil protested, but put the notepad aside.

“You want to know a secret, Phil?”

“Hmm?”

“You will never, ever, for as long as you live, actually be done again. Ever.” His eyebrows rose, and Laura glanced to where some of the smaller children were piled like cordwood on the pulled-out futon.

Phil sighed and then snorted a bare laugh. “This is one of the reasons I never...”

Laura nodded. “It’s big. It changes things.”

“And I’ll be doing it as a single parent,” Phil muttered to himself.

“Single parent maybe, but not alone.” Laura glanced to the door to the guest room which Nick and Natasha had claimed away from Phil. She moved to stand by his shoulder and ran her palm down the center of his back in the same way she would on Clint, to soothe out the tension in his rhomboids. The movement didn’t have the same effect on Phil -- his tension tended to gather in his lower back -- but the fact that she treated him with the same gentle care as her own husband melted and relaxed something deep in his core.

He let out a huge sigh. “I don’t want any of them pressured into situations they’re not comfortable with, but I also don’t want to over-commit myself and do wrong by all of them. Nick is right -- I’m not running a damned school.” He dropped his head and took off his glasses, rubbing wearily at his eyes. “I’m trying to build these guys a family.”

She gave his back a last rub and a definite pat. “You would have made a good dad, Phil. You still could,” she added and nodded towards one of the children wandering towards them, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Phil frowned and sorted through names. It was one of three Steve or Stevens -- Phil was not the only Captain America fanboy in SHIELD thank you very much Nick -- on his nearly nightly walkabout. Little Steve who had dark curly hair and a complexion that reminded Phil of trips to Malaysia, shuffled over to Phil and held open his arms.

“I don’t think I’m capable of a pick-up right now,” Phil told him. “You’re going to have to do some of the work.” Phil sat upright and helped little Steve climb into his lap. Steve sprawled against Phil in an octopus hug that effectively immobilized Phil, and fell asleep.  
\--  
Pepper’s lawyers arrived with their own portable habitats, and were accompanied by a half-dozen bunk beds in flat-packed Ikea form, but with Stark emblazoned on the side of the packing plastic. Though the lawyers didn’t make life any easier, they did make some very important things more immediately understandable.

Fury and Natasha made themselves scarce for the few days the lawyers were on site, disappearing in their beat up car to deal with some loose ends at a cemetery across the country, and in Congress. Clint sat in on Phil’s meetings with the lawyers with the drawn-tight air of someone who had been on the receiving end of lawyering in a similar instance, and had not come out the better for it. He would perch motionless with his good ear turned towards the conversation, a pensive look on his face.

Everyone at SHIELD had a life insurance policy -- it wasn’t an optional benefit in their type of work, no matter how ‘behind the lines’ a person’s job might be. The logistics of handling what turned out to be rather massive sums of money was daunting, not the least because most of the policies couldn’t be paid out without verification of death. It was a macabre, devastating merry-go-round of emotional crashes and technical decisionmaking.

Phil caught himself thinking, “This is what dying feels like,” multiple times each day, and had to chastise himself. Even if it was true.

The lawyers left after a few days, and their temporary habitats remained. The housing (and bathroom) pressure within the Barton household eased with a startling abruptness, and it almost seemed as though, with help, Phil could manage this.  
\--  
Somewhere between jumping into Lola on an otherwise uneventful afternoon to pick up Hope, and wrangling a dozen free-range tweens, Phil had forgotten that he wasn’t just handling these children -- he was responsible for them. Their wellbeing, their futures, and their lives were very much his own, personal responsibility, and though he had been dealing with -- immediately -- their safety, he realized he had failed to address any of the rest of their needs.

Which he realized when Yolanda, a twelve year old with a stupendous lung capacity, screamed directly into his face, “ _I can’t do it,_ ” with the utter conviction of someone who had just been asked to go to the moon under their own power. Phil rocked back on his heels and took a breath. Her face was red and splotchy and the rest of the house echoed with momentary silence at the outburst.

“Okay,” Phil said, matching her upset with calm. “You don’t have to.”

She almost immediately started crying, and he was feeling a bit teary even if it didn’t show, by the time he was done comforting her. It was at that point he made it a goal to sit down with everyone, individually, and figure out what they wanted out of life. He made it clear his only goals for them were that they made it into adulthood with an adequate education, without spawning any progeny, and with the means and tools to accomplish whatever goals they might set for themselves.

“You’re not _actually_ running an Montessori school,” Nick chided with a, “I can’t believe I have to explicitly say this” expression.

“No, but I need to remember that this isn’t about what I need or want,” Phil replied.

It had been a while since either of them -- Nick or Phil -- had acted entirely in the service of another human being. In the service of ideals, of the nation, of their organization, sure, but in the selfless service of another flawed human; it had been a while. And Phil found himself in service to thirty, simultaneously, and at the least that required some significant planning.

He started with the oldest of the children -- the ones nearly adults and finishing high school -- and moved in a steady descent through the age groupings. Three were already accepted to colleges, and though he felt a pang of guilt at the rush of relief that ten percent of his ad hoc family could be sent off to their lives, he was cognizant enough to not let that relief show. Eight others were in high school, nine in middle school, five in grade school and three in kindergarten. 

Though he had spoken with each of them about their placement options (with levels of agency tailored to the age and maturity level of each child), the interviews, in retrospect, had been rather clinical.

The question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” drew a baffling variety of replies from ‘Captain America’ and ‘Rambo’ to ‘a Mermaid’, ‘doctor’, ‘fireman’, and ‘mad scientist’. Phil himself had gone through a rather long ‘Captain America’ phase, which in truth he had never grown out of, and a briefer policeman phase. What Phil heard behind the erratic proclamations of children were underlying kernels of truth: I want to help people: I want to find knowledge: I want to create. He heard a lot of other things from the children along with aspirations. I’m sad. I’m scared. I blame myself. I blame my parent. I’m angry. I’m helpless. I’ll never be quite right again.

He tried to help. He offered sympathy and support. He offered advice. He listened and consoled and promised things he wasn’t sure he would be able to follow through. He promised to protect and defend this little blip of SHIELD’s legacy, and he promised to nurture and tend, and he promised to be there, day or night, should he be needed. 

Fury raised an eyebrow at Phil, overhearing one of these conversations. “This really the path you want to take?” he asked. He and Natasha had returned earlier in the week, Natasha leaving a wake of political upheaval from her Senate hearing.

“They need a champion, and they deserve our time. I intend to offer them the resources they need to succeed.”

Fury dropped his gaze in an uncharacteristically meek affect. “We could use a man like you in rebuilding.”

“I’ve been out for a while, Nick, not to mention I won’t be able to do field-work in the foreseeable future.” Phil gestured at his still-weak left side.

Fury gestured off his objection. “The docs said the same to me.” He shrugged. “I need people I can trust.”

_That’s not untrue_ , Phil thought wryly. “Nick.”

“Phil.”

“I”m going to do this, and maybe in a few years we can talk again, but until then I am going to give these kids some much-needed stability.”

Fury sighed. “I can’t change your mind?”

“‘Fraid not.”  
\--  
Phil’s hackles rose. The children were quiet -- too quiet -- and Phil frowned as a gesture of putting the pointer and middle fingers to one ear propagated across the room. They all ended up looking at him. “Mr. President!” Clint began the shout, but the children took it up in a shrill chorus, “Get down Mr. President!” Clint got him behind the knees in such a way that as he fell he didn’t get any horrible injuries, but he was quickly piled on by what felt like hundreds of children, all squealing and struggling in their delighted excitement.

Clint was technically under him, in the least desirable place, but as small sharp elbows and knees found their way into Phil’s flanks, having the protection of another large body atop him sounded more and more desirable. “Okay, okay, off.” Phil ordered, and the children rolled and crawled off of them. “What have you been teaching these kids?” Phil asked in an undertone.

“I’m blaming the YMCA summer camp for this one,” Clint countered.

Phil gave him an exasperated look that clearly said he knew Clint had started _this particular_ round of borderline violent camp games. He’d already had to break up a game of aptly named “deathball” which involved dodgeball and every single ball in the Barton household arsenal. Footballs were not meant to be used for dodgeball. Baseballs were not supposed to be hurled _at_ other people unless those people were intended to _catch_ that ball.   
\--  
When the emancipation paperwork arrived via DHL van, it was not the jovial celebration Phil had somehow, naively thought it might be. The relevant children lined up as though they were graduating to be sent off to the very mouth of hell, and accepted their paperwork with the solemnity of a death sentence. It was the final proof, for them, that their families were truly gone: that there would be no hail mary miracle return of any missing parents.  
\--  
“Hey, Clint? I’m going for a drive to put down Olivia.”

“She still not staying asleep?” Clint asked. Laura shook her head. “Okay. It’s late -- be careful.” He leaned in for an absent minded kiss.

Laura got her purse, took Olivia’s hand, and loaded them both into the minivan. Olivia buckled herself into the carseat.

The night was quiet, heavy with moisture and rich with the smells of earth and growth. She bumped down their drive slowly. Out of their unpaved drive she turned and headed towards WalMart at well under the speed limit.

Olivia slumped in her carseat almost immediately, but Laura continued to drive. She cruised through the WalMart parking lot and out onto the main road.

A late-evening hitchhiker had their thumb out. Laura pulled a u-turn and rumbled onto the side of the highway so the drivers side was nearest the hitchhiker. She rolled down her window and leaned out. “Looking for a ride?” she asked, faux casual. The kid made a break for it, down the highway and behind Laura’s bumper: Laura had noticed two of the kids sneaking off earlier, and figured they had not gotten far on foot yet. A second runaway broke cover in the unlit underbrush at the side of the highway and headed to meet up with the other kid.

Laura sighed, flipped the minivan into reverse and a tight turn. Olivia slept through the antics like a champ. Laura angled the nose of the van so kid one ran full on into it without the agility to dodge, slow, or vault the vehicle. Kid two ran into the side panel hard enough to dent the mold formed plastic, and fell, dazed.

Laura had a brief moment to thank her lucky stars that these teens did not have the Barton’s supernatural acrobatics skills, and another moment of prescient terror at what the teenage years with Lilia, Cooper, and Nate would be like.

“Are we going to talk or are we gonna do this?” Laura asked.

“You can’t make us go with you,” Kid one said. Katie or Sarah - Laura had it nailed down to one or the other. Katie-or-Sarah had a backpack filled with odds and ends and the bulge of a gun stuffed in her waistband. Laura only hoped the safety was on and the kid didn’t shoot her own butcheek off.

“One,” Laura raised her hand and a single finger, “I can. Two, I will. Three, you actually want me to, because as much as it might seem awesome to run off and become a vigilante or a street kid, spend ten minutes talking to my husband about it and I can guarantee you you will not be so into the idea.”

“Fuck you,” definitely, probably Sarah spat. Laura sighed and shook her head.

“Look, if you can convince me you have a halfway decent plan, I will give you a ride to the greyhound station myself,” she said. She had no such intentions, even if they had a battle plan to take down Hydra double-handedly that the Naval War College would give a standing ovation.

Sarah shifted weight to her back leg. Kid two groaned and stood.

“Juan, get in the car,” Laura ordered. Juan got in the car. “You too. Eventually someone is going to come down this road and kill you accidentally. We can stay warm in here while you tell me your plan.”

Sarah gave Laura a very dirty look but got in. She tried to inconspicuously shift the handgun around in the waist of her pants but Laura held out her hand, and Sarah gave it over with a sullen expression.

Laura checked the safety -- on thank god -- and put it in the center console. She gave a meaningful look to Juan with the rearview mirror, and he held up his hands, unarmed. Laura wasn’t sure which kid she was more worried about.

“Now. What exactly were you planning on doing?” Laura asked.

Sarah’s face went cold and hard, and she looked away and out into the darkness.

Laura’s eyes went to the rear view mirror and stared down Juan. “We were gonna get representative Solenger and get him to use his Hydra contacts to find my dad.”

“How are you so certain that Mr. Solenger is Hydra?”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “I know how campaign finance works. It’s not like it’s hard with everything on the web. Also he looks like a Nazi.”

“Be that as it may, there are courts to deal with Mr. Solenger if he is indeed Hydra.”

“I wasn’t going to kill him,” Sarah said with a note of ‘duh’ in her voice.

“Just kidnap him a bit,” Juan agreed.

“And what exactly do you think he and Hydra would do after you got what you wanted, assuming your plan went off perfectly and you got Juan’s father back? Which I can tell you from experience is not something that you should assume.”

“Go off and... hide,” Sarah supplied after a too-long silence.

“Right. Okay. And what do you think that Solenger would do with his Hydra buddies to make sure that you and Juan and Juan’s dad and anybody who helped you ended up tortured and dead?”

Sarah remained silent, but looked scared. Good. She needed to be scared.

“The answer is nothing. You would be a stain and an insult to them -- one which they would wipe out as easy as anything. I am not saying this to scare you -- though you should be scared -- I am telling you this so you _know_ down deep, that we are trying our very best to keep you safe like your parents wanted. Because that’s what I would want from someone I left my children to, and by haring off like this you are dishonoring their wishes for you and putting yourself in danger of a painful, awful death.” 

Sarah was the type of kid who, once challenged, was unable to gracefully back down. So she stared at Laura with defiance, even as the fear seeped in, and the regret and remorse behind it.

Laura put the minivan in gear. “I’m driving us back to the farm,” she informed them and got no objection. Olivia slept on.

Natasha raised an eyebrow at the pair of children who preceded Laura-carrying-Olivia. Laura rolled her eyes and shrugged behind the teens’ backs and disappeared to tuck in Olivia. The teens hung around looking sullen and caught out.

Laura returned and talked quietly with them.

“Problem?” Natasha asked when Laura sat down opposite her at the kitchen table. Laura shook her head.

“No need to trouble the boys with it.”

“Not what I asked.”

“How’s Nick doing?” Laura countered.

Natasha smiled, slow and distant. “Oh, you know: playing with the kids and trying to pretend he doesn’t love it.” she paused. “He’s doing pretty well for a dead man.”

Laura’s eyes cut to the den where Phil slept with at least one child on him. “That’s been going around,” Laura said, dry as dust.

Natasha’s eyebrows did something complicated and she leaned towards Laura. “Did you know anything about this?” From her tone it was clear Natasha had not been aware of Phil’s ‘not dead’ status.

“No.” Laura shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t have kept this to myself if I’d known.”

“Which is probably why Nick kept it from us,” Natasha concluded. She sighed. “Not that I’m inclined to give his more extreme paranoia a pass right now.”

“I can’t help but think some sane oversight would have gone a long way on this one,” Laura agreed.

Natasha looked towards the ceiling and for the first time since showing up with Nick and their almost dead Honda, she looked as brittle and lost as when Clint had first brought her here, so many years ago. Laura sat beside her on the bench seat and pulled her to rest against her side. Natasha went, and Laura stroked her hand up and down the other woman’s arm.

“You did the right thing putting SHIELD out on the web,” Laura said. She understood, intimately, how brave it had been for Natasha; a person never on the right side of outcomes from transparency or truth telling.

“Yeah,” Natasha agreed after a long pause. “What kind of covert agency has all its covert intel on the web, though?”

“SHIELD is dead,” Laura said. She felt like the only doctor in the OR willing to call a dead patient. Only she wasn’t a doctor -- she was a family member and it hurt. Lord did it hurt to say. From the way Natasha stiffened in her arms it seemed to be the thing she needed to hear. “SHIELD is dead,” she repeated more quietly.  
\--  
Phil smiled, his gaze flicking from his asset to Hope and back again. “I’ve spent enough time handling figurative children. I think settling down with some real ones might be good for the both of us right now.”

Clint frowned and nodded. “Can’t be harder than Nat and I early days. You know the place is always open, right?” he asked making a vague gesture behind himself.

“Yeah, we know.”

Clint crouched so he was on a level with Hope. “You are always welcome back here, okay?” Clint asked.

Hope nodded and rushed him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he made a gentle sort of a sound that Phil could recognize anywhere as Clint’s repressed pleasure. Clint wrapped an arm under Hope’s butt and stood easily.

“I’ll walk you out.”

The rest of the kids were in the car already. Sarah had asserted her supremacy in the pack by claiming the shotgun. The smaller kids were all in the back in a probably unsafe and definitely illegal unbelted mess. Phil sighed and shook his head. “Looks like I might need a different vehicle.”

“Join the minivan crowd,” Clint said, and tucked Hope in amongst the other kids.

“Quite a change,” Phil commented. Clint nodded. “Everyone good to go?” There were nods.

Phil and Clint shook hands one last time and Phil got into Lola. As they bumped off down the drive, Clint could barely hear a small voice ask, “Are you gonna make it fly, Phil?”


End file.
